How EA’s Star Wars video game developers are approaching the creative process

Della Rocca: It comes back to your comment much earlier on about the tension between methodology and intuition. We’re not slaves to data, even though it informs creative choices and decisions.

Question: What’s your recruiting process like? What do you look for in applicants and candidates?

Hennig: The philosophy of hiring should be to look for potential, not necessarily experience.

Raymond: Passion and potential. Those are two key things. Do people care about the product, care about games? Do they want to make something great? That counts for a lot.

Question: When you start a new project, it can be daunting. You have an idea of what you want to do, but you how do you get over that block when you start?

Hennig: My advice would be, we live in an age of distraction. It takes a while before the wheels start turning. You have to have the patience to wait out that horrible feeling of, “I have no ideas and the page is blank.” But if you go, “Oh, I’ll just check my email, let me go look at Facebook,” you’ll never get into that mode, because you reset every time. You have to push through and keep thinking. That’s my best advice.

Della Rocca: I’d say, go do a game jam. That’ll keep you moving. There’s one coming up in January, Global Game Jam.

Question: Video games engineer or create systems that themselves create other things. When you’re creating those systems, do you think there are differences in that process compared to creating other sorts of things – story, art, environments, things like that?

Hennig: This is the ideal, right? In some ways it’s the Holy Grail, a game that’s fully systemic and has all kinds of surprises in it, where player agency is rewarded in all kinds of unexpected ways. The challenge of designing systems is all that unpredictability. It’s both a benefit and a challenge. That’s why it’s so tempting to just script something up so you know what’s going to happen. But we should never default to that if we can help it.

Question: Amy, you mentioned checking your ego at the door. What do you do manage that issue for both yourself and your team?

Hennig: We all have egos, right? We’re human beings. The thing is, especially if you’re in a leadership role, it’s incumbent upon you to not engage on that level. If someone is sort of bristling, if their ego is reacting and they’re feeling challenged, you have to just barrel through it. And you have to check yourself.

Sometimes you’ll look at people’s work and they do something you didn’t expect. You have to, in your head, before you say a word, think it through. “That’s different than what I asked for, but is it just as good? Is it better? Can I put my ego aside and determine that it’s even better than what I imagined? Or is it not as good as what I asked for and we need to readjust something?” The muscle you develop it the ability to do that as quickly as possible before you speak, and not just have an awkward silence while you go through the process.

It’s having the ability to say, “Okay, I can look at this more objectively.” If it’s better than what I can come up with, I shouldn’t feel threatened. I should get excited.

Raymond: It has to be a part of the culture you’re trying to build. Everything has to be aligned. For anything you’re trying to instill in terms of culture in the workplace, you have to make sure everything you’re doing is aligned with that.

If part of your culture is humility, does one person have a corner office with leather couches? Does everyone have the same desk, or do leads have bigger desks? You have to watch out for all of that. If you really want to create certain values in your culture, everything has to be aligned. Lead by example. Check yourself. Make sure other people feel comfortable checking that as well. Look at all the things you have in place in terms of team structure and workplace. Is there anything there that treats someone like the rock star? If so, you should address that.

Hennig: “Thank you,” “Good job,” and “I’m sorry” go a long way. In any relationship you have to be able to swallow your pride sometimes and praise people and apologize, if an apology is needed.

Question: When you’re exploring a new IP, is there a process that you go through to decide when to set a deadline on that creative process? Is there a point where you say, “We’re not satisfied with what we have, but we’ll run with the best idea we’ve got”?

Hennig: Sometimes you can table certain things and take more time with them while you move forward on other things. I don’t think it’s that cut and dried. You want to work with people who have enough combined wisdom and experience that you can gut check it together and say, “Yeah, this could stand some time marinating.” Rely on your team to check that.

Question: Jade, you mentioned developing an organization that’s flat in structure. Are there any particular challenges to keep in mind when you’re doing that?

Raymond: It requires everyone having a certain amount of ownership and autonomy. In some cases it can be retraining the way people think of working. If people have been on bigger projects where they’re used to having three layers of project managers putting in each task one by one—If that’s what they’re used to and all of a sudden it isn’t there, how are you retraining those people to think about their jobs around taking more ownership and taking up more space?

Question: As someone who’s in school right now with ambitions of eventually working in the game industry, is going into graduate work a good idea, or is that a waste of time?

Raymond: As long as you feel like you’re learning something and doing something valuable, no. Do you think you’re wasting your time? That would be the barometer. We’ve hired great grad students who’ve come with a wealth of knowledge and experience. The only case where my answer would be yes is if that’s what you feel. There are teams doing a lot of research around analytics and genre and the way players are playing. There’s research into new technology and where that could lead. That’s part of planning for the future.